Dark Blast Update Infodump

Just gonna note down whatever useful stuff people have found out about this update. It’ll include info on new gear and Dark Blasts in particular. If any new info is dug up later I’ll probably add it to this post.

Detonation Weapon Series

These new collection files are primarily progressed through Buster Quests. You can only earn credit for Omega Hunar’s part through the Endless Belligerence Emergency Quest, which for now is also the only place in the game he spawns anyway.

Special Abilty Factor

Its SAF is Modulator, so even if you don’t plan on actually using these weapons it may be worth grabbing the files just for some useful fodder items down the road.

Weapon Potential:

The potential works a little bit like the old Ares one in that its power scales based on your Dark Blast gauge (instead of Photon Blast). It also boosts the rate at which you build your Dark Blast gauge and increases the amount of time you can use it for.

It seems that the damage bonus will persist after you’ve activated Dark Blast, which considering it’s not far behind Qliphad in terms of attack power actually makes these fairly decent weapons as at full power they have a 17% damage mod versus Qliphad’s 14%.

What I don’t know yet is what resets the potential’s power, such as:

Does it persist through weapon swap?

Does it persist through area change?

If the answer to both of these is yes then these are actually good weapons even if they do take some warming up to get to full power. Outside of low-attack weapons these ought to be competitive with Clifford weapons in overall performance (at max power, of course).

For now it only covers a few weapon types, but it feels like a safe bet that we will be getting other Dark Blast types at a later point. The weapons released so far are based on the current Dark Blast (Elder type) in appearance, so the others may be based on their respective Falz types as well. There are 18 weapon types in the game, so 13 more to cover which could easily be spread out among the remaining three Falz types.

Alta Barrel

A brand new weapon that has a low chance of dropping from Advance Quests included in the current Arks Boost Road (which is Skyscape, Ruins and Facility). It’s essentially the Twin Machinegun version of Altacray, complete with the same Hero-focused potential.

Weapon Potential:

Lv1: Boosts power by 5%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge

Lv2: Boosts power by 7%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge

Lv3: Boosts power by 10%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge

Considering it has slightly more attack than Qliphad, this is a pretty powerful weapon if you’re able to pull off a lot of Hero counters in a given fight.

Special Ability Factor:

Its SAF is Spirita VI (+7 PP), the same as Altacray.

Elder Pain: Omega

The brand new 14-star sword which you’ll probably never see. However, unlike Elder Pain in its day, which was more a gimmick than anything, this weapon is actually solidly practical. Also, unlike Elder Pain, you don’t need to break Omega Hunar’s sword to get a chance of it dropping.

Its Special Ability Factor is Ability IV, like the other 14*s so far.

Its potential is the classic Vampiric Blade, which recovers 4/5/6% of damage dealt in health. That alone isn’t what makes it practical; it’s the massive 2,201 S-atk the weapon boasts at +35! This is 221 attack higher than Demonia Saber and 224 higher than Akatsuki, the other 14-star swords.

Now the thing with S-atk that high on a weapon is it benefits from elemental bonuses much more than lower attack weapons. For example, Qliphad Calibur at 60% element gains an additional effective 997 S-atk before applying modifiers (element only includes base attack, it doesn’t include affixes so Antithesis Trainer has no effect here) where as Omega gains a whopping 1320.

Below is a chart made with the damage calculator (with credit to RoboArks for the original chart. I’m trusting their numbers on this as it worked out similarly to calculations done by a friend).

So it slightly beats out Qliphad but also has the benefit of making you near immortal while using it. I’d call that a practical weapon! So unless you’re lucky enough to be sporting a Demonia or Akatsuki then Elder Pain: Omega is definitely worth using if you manage to get one.

Weaponoid Potentials

A few old weapons gained Weaponoid potentials with this update; Ideal Scissors, Astral Riser NT and Avenger NT.

Ideal Scissors

Lv1: Increase damage to bosses by 18% and attack PP recovery by ?%

Lv2: Increase damage to bosses by 19% and attack PP recovery by ?%

Lv3: Increase damage to bosses by 20% and attack PP recovery by 20%

Remember Ideal weapons? I do, I have fond memories of Challenge Mode at its prime.

Anyway, the new potential makes it a sort of decent weapon if you don’t have a Zeinesis or Qliphad but it’s weaker than them overall mostly due to Ideal weapons having the lowest attack power of all 13*s. The damage comparison works out to something like this (with thanks to NextTime000 for running these numbers). So it’s helpful if you don’t have a 13* Wired Lance already and have the weaponoid stones to spare.

Astral Riser NT

Lv3: Increases damage dealt by 13% and reduces PP consumption by 13% while special bullets are loaded

Not at all convinced by this potential, seems kind of garbage.

Avenger NT

Lv1: Increase damage on non-weak points by 22%

Lv2: Increase damage on non-weak points by 24%

Lv3: Increase damage on non-weak points by 27%

This potential is sort of curious but perhaps not that useful on a Rifle. For the most part, Rifles tend to hit weak-points on enemies but I mean if you’re against enemies that don’t have weak-points and you also don’t have Weak-bullet loaded that is an awfully meaty damage boost (since the rebalance, a weakbulleted hitbox counts as a weak point regardless of the resulting damage modifier). It just might be too awkward to satisfy its condition with this particular weapon type.

Incidentally, Avenger NT is the only new weapon out of this batch and much like Yamigarasu NT its Special Ability Factor is Soul Receptor. So even if you don’t plan on using it, it might be worth getting to help with affixing future weapons.

Bluesy Requiem NT

Increases power and PP recovery for every successful Just-Guard. Bonus is lost when you take any damage.

Lv1: ?% Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of ?%

Lv2: % Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of ?%

Lv3: 5% Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of 15%

An interesting potential mechanically but one that has to be maintained actively. On the plus side, if the enemy has lots of multi-hitting attacks you could actually max this potential out quickly though Charge Parry as each hit counts as a Just-Guard. Overall, due to Bluesy NT’s low base attack even if you keep the potential up this weapon is a little wimpy compared to other options.

Like Avenger NT, its Special Ability Factor is Soul Receptor.

Dark Blast: Elder

I’m not going to make a comprehensive guide on Dark Blasts as you can already find that over on Bumped here, but I can go over some quirks about it that might not be immediately obvious.

Overall

It functions essentially like Nanoblasts did in Phantasy Star Universe, only anyone can use them and you’re limited to using it only once per quest. Unlike Nanoblasts however, if you’re defeated while transformed you just lose the transformation instead of dying.

To unlock it for your characters, either clear Episode 5 Chapter 2 or clear the Endless Belligerence quest on Super Hard or above at least once. This unlocks it for your account.

EXP Gain

Dark Blasts gain a portion of your EXP in a similar way that Skill Rings do. They will only gain EXP from enemy kills which is totaled up and added to your Dark Blast’s total EXP at the end of a quest. As such, don’t bother chugging EXP tickets.

The proportion of your EXP gained depends largely on what enemies you’re killing. It’s 10% for most enemies in the game while it’s 30% from Aquatic Darkers (of all types, aside Phantom), Dark Falz and any enemy in Buster Quests taking place in the Verun Empire.

This means aside catching Endless Belligerence or any Falz raid the most effective way to level up this particular Dark Blast is by hitting up the Ruins Advance Quest on either difficulty.

Dark Blast Gauge

So how do you progress the gauge? The short of it is “no one seems to know”.

The gauge seems to have a different rule set to the likes of Compounds, Hero Gear and Photon Blasts. As far as is known, it’s based on the amount of damage you do to enemies (but it may not be relative to their max HP as is the case with other gauges like this).

It also seems like there’s a timer that has to expire before you’re allowed to make progress, as often you might see your Photon Blast is full before your Dark Blast even has its first bar.

Ultimately, this gauge isn’t actually that well understood for now. Hopefully it’s worked out soon and I’ll replace this section when we know for sure how it works.

Other Tidbits

Exp you earn will go into an account-wide EXP pool. Note that this the total amount of EXP that each of your characters gets to spend on their respective Dark Blast skill trees, so you won’t have to earn more to cover your alts. The displayed amount of EXP in the Dark Blast skill menu is that particular character’s unspent EXP, not your total.

You’ll need a total of 225,555,190 Exp in order to max out every Dark Blast skill, which works out to earning 2.25Bn-751M real exp from enemies and quest clears depending on which enemies you kill. Swiki works this out to be the equivalent of getting 9 classes to lv80 + another class to lv34 to 27 classes to lv80 and one class to level 65. Considering there’s a chance that other Dark Blast types might be released in the future these seem pretty darn insane requirements, but at least they had the mercy to make this account-wide.

Thoughts

It’s nifty but it feels kind of weak compared to my regular attacks, at least in the early levels. Between that and only having a minute every quest to learn how to play it has made exploring this feature awkward. It gets some crazy air with its double-jump however and between its jump-kick and Physical Dash it can cover an enormous amount of ground quickly.

My early impressions are that Tyrant Strike is your gap-closer with pretty respectable AoE to boot. Infinity Rush is for wailing on single targets, like bosses and raidboss weakpoints (particularly if they’re static as its DPS raises over time). Punishment Knuckle is a pretty good frontal AoE attack useful for dealing heavy damage to piles of enemies at once. So I mean, in terms of Photon Arts it covers what it needs to and as its Photon Arts keep you airborne combined with its incredible jumping power aerial targets shouldn’t be an issue either.

One thing to be aware of is even though it has a lot of HP, Dark Blast: Elder is surprisingly fragile, with a meager amount of defense stats. It really can’t take a lot of punishment, so be wary about going gun-ho against particularly dangerous enemy attacks (such as Omega Hunar’s ground slam attacks) and from going too deep into a pile of enemies.

Towards The Future

As I said earlier, it seems pretty obvious to me that they’re going to release additional transformation types in the future. We have 4 Falz types afterall, the 4 kingdoms of Omega are all based on the different Falz types and so much of the current Dark Blast’s aesthetics, moves and mechanics are based on one of the Falzes.

That said, there’s been no official confirmation that that’s the plan and so far all we’ve had is that Dark Blast colours will be customizable at a later date. There’s also nothing in the data that supports additional blast types yet, aside inferring it via the internal name specifically referencing Elder.

Whatever their plans are, they’re keeping their lips sealed for now so we can only speculate.